Emanuel presents more evidence for eligibility

City election official sent letter explaining absentee voting

November 18, 2010|By John Chase, Tribune reporter

A year ago, a top city election official wrote a letter to then- White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel informing him that Chicagoans who had gone to work for President Barack Obama could vote by absentee ballot.

"A significant number of registered voters from the city of Chicago are serving both in the White House and several Cabinet agencies," Lance Gough, executive director of the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners, wrote in the Nov. 17, 2009, letter, which contained absentee ballot applications for Emanuel to share. "All Illinois voters now have the right to cast absentee ballots, whether or not they may be in their home counties on Election Day."

In January, Emanuel signed and returned an application for an absentee ballot, according to a copy provided Thursday by his mayoral campaign. It was presented as evidence that the former Obama aide and North Side congressman should be considered a legal resident of Chicago.

He is expected to face a challenge over whether he can legally be on the ballot to replace retiring Mayor Richard Daley due to laws that require candidates to be residents for a year before the Feb. 22 election.

"It shows that the board considered him to be a Chicago voter," Emanuel spokesman Ben LaBolt said.

Election attorney Burt Odelson said he intends next week to file a challenge to Emanuel's residency aimed at keeping him off the ballot. Odelson is advising a rival candidate, state Sen. James T. Meeks, but said he is not representing Meeks in the ballot challenge.

Odelson said that as part of the challenge, he could question Emanuel's voting status, which was twice classified as "inactive" by Chicago election officials after he left for Washington.

In fact, Gough's letter advised Emanuel to tell White House staffers from Chicago to "forward their absentee ballot applications to my attention so that we may place a note on their registration to prevent canvassing that may affect their registration status."

Despite that effort, Emanuel was put on the inactive voter list anyway when the board's database was matched against a Postal Service database as part of a routine effort to clean up voter rolls, board spokesman Jim Allen said. That canvass showed Emanuel was having his mail rerouted to Washington from Chicago.

An inactive designation does not automatically remove a registered voter from the rolls. Emanuel was not removed and was able to restore his active voting status by filling out the absentee ballot affidavit shortly before the February Illinois primary.

Emanuel was again placed on inactive status after a post-primary canvass. He was restored to active status this fall and registered to vote at a new Chicago address after returning to run for mayor and finding out the tenant renting his home wouldn't move out.

Voter registration is not a definitive indication of residency, lawyers who spoke for Emanuel noted. They and others said that if the voter registration issue is raised in a challenge to Emanuel's residency, it would be just one factor in what's expected to be a complicated legal fight over the meaning of eligibility rules.

Election lawyers say the key issues are physical presence and a candidate's intent to live in a municipality.

There's no dispute about Emanuel's whereabouts the last two years: He was working in the White House and living with his family in northwest Washington. But lawyer Mike Kreloff, who spoke for Emanuel earlier this week, said state law allows people to keep their voting rights if they leave their home for government service.

What will likely be of more debate is Emanuel's intent. Cutting against him is the well-reported fact that he didn't leave his North Side home empty, lawyers said, choosing instead to rent it.

Working in Emanuel's favor is that when he moved to Washington for his job as chief of staff, he didn't sell his house, continued to pay property taxes there and still listed his Chicago home on his driver's license.